Business Athletes: James Devonport
Optimising For Longevity in Business w/ James Devonport, founder of UserLoop
Hello and welcome to Business Athletes everyone!
Each week, we’ll explore the athlete-like habits behind a different business leader. In less than 5-minutes, we aim to provide you with practical tactics that you can quickly apply in your day-to-day.⚡️
In the 6th edition of Business Athletes, we sat down with James Devonport, founder of UserLoop, a leading post purchase survey app for Shopify stores.
UserLoop is a SaaS app that collects and analyses customer feedback with the power of AI, designed to help store owners grow their sales.
James has also recently launched the No Code UK, scheduled for 21st May 2024 in London. This event brings together NoCode developers, freelancers, educators, and agency owners to network, learn, and collaborate.
1. Pre-Game Preparation
What’s most interesting about James’ routine — and something we could all spend some time reflecting on — is how personal it is to his character and to how his company is designed.
He transforms his personal working lifestyle into the edge for longevity in business, which in turn, maximizes his success to win.
Routines Of A Night Owl
I typically work quite late a lot of the time. I guess I’ve always been a bit of a night owl.
So I do all of the workout stuff in the morning to get me going for the day. Then I check emails and do a few bits and pieces.
After that, I have all the energy to start building and interacting with customers.
An Orderly Set-Up For An Orderly Mind
As for my desk, I have a very orderly setup for work.
I don’t work with tons of screens either. I use two, or even one sometimes. And typically, I’ll be working on one tool at a time as well.
It’s super important for me to minimise distractions.
2. Gameday
Problems From Every Angle
Operating a SaaS like UserLoop, which is part of the Shopify ecosystem, means that my users are globally distributed.
So, I’m usually busy with customer requests at every time of the day. I need to be very disciplined about dealing with my priorities every day.
Limiting Constant Interruptions
During work, I make sure to minimise chats on Slack. There are certain occasions when it is useful — when you’re kind of dealing with technical stuff or trying to work out solutions to things.
But in general, it’s really disruptive when you’re in the middle of actually getting stuff done.
I think there’s something to be said for a well thought-out email or Loom video. I quite like it when it’s fully formed and thought-through from the other person.
Different from Slack messages, well-thought-out emails and Loom videos 1) practically achieve the desired result more often due to clarity, structure and context, and 2) subliminally, showcase effort and empathy, which also helps incentivise the other party to answer with 100% care.
These could be requests or thoughts and ideas, or even feedback to your team.
And the result they most likely generate is better, more thoughtful decisions. Even if those decisions turn out to be wrong, this culture allows teams and organisations to understand the reasons why they were wrong, so they happen again.
Other leading billion dollar startups have a very strong writing culture — Amazon, Stripe, Brex…just to name a few.
I’d recommend reaching this post to get started or get some ideas flowing: https://www.brex.com/journal/increasing-the-quality-of-our-decisions
What Drives Your Flow State
The best flow state that I get into is certainly with building the product.
In terms of tools, that means that most days, I’ll primarily be looking at bubble.io, which is the no-code platform UserLoop is partly built around.
I’ll be on it a lot of the time, and that to be honest, is the most flow state I ever get into when working.
If you have an idea for a software product or business, that’s perhaps the best way to get started on it. One can probably build about any type of MVP using that tool. And this comes without any sponsorship from bubble.io by the way 😉
James even started UserLoop on bubble, has by now passed the 10,000 hour threshold for mastery, as laid out by Malcolm Gladwell.
What this reminds us is the long-term commitment that it takes, to succeed not only in business, but also in learning a skill. It’s what allowed James to transform his curiosity and knowledge into an incredible product and cash-flowing, growing business.
Building With No Compromise
I like the freedom of being able to build and work on what I think customers deserve, without having to compromise because of investors or any one else. I really don’t ever talk to investors or think about that anymore.
As long as I’m making a product that customers like and are willing to pay for, running the business in a cash efficient way — which I think by being bootstrapped that has built into the DNA of the company — then I know I’m winning.
I guess for me the whole vibe is building something that you want to work on long-term, and that you get excited to work on every day.
3. Post-Game
Designing A Business For Longevity
I’ve been quite conscious about how I’ve structured what I’m doing now.
I’ve done startups before where it was like VC funded and it was very highly stressful and I probably didn’t deal with it that well.
So, I was very conscious to make it less of a sprint, and more like a marathon. Instead of being hyper-aggressive and goal-orientated day in, day out — I’ve tried to optimise for longevity.
I guess I want to run my company in a calm way, and in a profitable way, where I’m aiming for an infinite runway.
I spent some real time thinking: “okay, what do I want to spend like five, 10 years on that?” I just want to enjoy what I’m doing, and not get so stressed out that I end up burning out and just going back to doing what I was doing before.
So much has been said and discussed around VCs versus bootstrapped startups this year. Some leaders in the tech space, like Chamath Palihapitiya even shared that the winner in tech this year would be “the bootstrapped startup”.
Well, James bootstrapped before it became cool. I think there’s so much to learn from his mindset in making that decision.
What’s interesting is that he focused on designing a lifestyle that allowed him to work on something for a long time. That’s the key here. Sticking with something long-enough to allow for compounding and for serendipity to find us at various moments.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself before deciding:
- What kind of lifestyle do you want?
Then, what type of business do you have:
- Is this business highly capital-intensive? Does it require deep tech or profound expertise? Does it operate in an incredibly competitive environment, where competitors are already very well capitalised?
If the answer to one or more of these is a yes, the looking at VC might be a good move.
However, if none of the answers are a yes, then I’d challenge you to think of what money can do better than pure hustle can’t. Sure, you can move quicker, delegate, etc. But that comes with a price — pressure from investors to move in directions you may not want to. There’s definitely something to be said about building a company the calm way, making sure one has control over every decision.
Life Of An Indie Founder
But I guess the main thing about being an indie founder is there’s kind of never completely off time.
That’s just the way it is. That’s kind of the deal that you make with yourself.
So you’re not working nine-five anymore, you’re instead in the queue to Glastonbury and you’re answering customer support tickets, which I’ve already had to do.
Every time I’m on holiday, I’m at the bar or at the pool or whatever, and I’ll have my phone answering tickets and dealing with other stuff.
4. The Business Athlete Mindset
What Does Winning Feel Like
I also like the challenge of keeping up with industry development, like AI.
That’s been the thing that has excited me the most — following the developments in that, seeing how quickly it’s moved and how quickly I can put it into our product and in front of customers.
It doesn’t feel like work so much. I just don’t have those Sunday scaries anymore.
It’s not like I’ve got some boss breathing down my neck, being nasty. It’s customers who are using the app, who I like and love to hear what they have to say and help them achieve what they want to achieve.
High-Performers That Inspire
I don’t think there are many more people on earth doing more than Elon Musk to move things forward, I really admire his worth ethic — though not sure I could sustain it myself long term!
I often think about his withering message to the former Twitter CEO — “What did you get done this week?”.
I do my best to make sure I have a good answer to that every week — even if I’m only answering myself!
If you’ve enjoyed this interview, don’t forget to subscribe below so you don’t miss next week’s incredible interview with a leading fintech operator and founder! ⚡️
🏆 Business Athletes is a newsletter and community focused on studying and celebrating high-performance in business and in life.
